The Second Bat Guano War: a Hard-Boiled Spy Thriller

by J. M. Porup

  I looked around the room. The five members of our welcoming committee looked away. The resemblance was unmistakable.

  “Well, Fritz,” I said. “I don’t know what happened to your sons. I gather something bad.”

  “Something bad, bullshit,” he said. “They died, that’s what.”

  He put an inhaler to his lips, took a sharp breath, pumped the medicine into his lungs.

  Victor lifted his eyes meaningfully at the ceiling. “World’s highest ski lift.”

  “Highest ski resort,” Fritz retorted. He thumped his cane on the floor. “And a bloody good resort it was, too.”

  “OK,” I said, stuffing more cookies in my mouth. “I’ll bite. What happened?”

  “Global warming happened.” The leader of the grandsons spoke. He blew a gum bubble, popped it with a crack of his teeth.

  “How’s that?”

  “Why you think we’re here and not there?”

  I shrugged. “Not the season for snow?”

  “It is always the season for snow at five thousand meters, young man.” Fritz was agitated now, grinding and pounding his cane into the rug. “Unless the fucking glacier melts, that is.”

  “Which it did,” I offered.

  “Little by little.” His great eyebrows bowed low. “Then one day, woompf!”

  “Avalanche,” said the bubble-gum-popping grandson.

  “What do you expect?” Fritz continued. “We must all suffer so fat Americans can drive SUVs.”

  I swallowed my ginger snaps. I felt vaguely ill. “Speaking of SUVs,” I said.

  Fritz nodded. Snot dribbled down his long mustache onto the handle of his cane. He said to Victor, “What say you, old friend?”

  Victor crossed his arms, tucked his chin to his chest. “Likely to be a useless errand. But under the circumstances, I don’t see how it can hurt.”

  “We can pay you,” I said. “Victor has money. Right, Vic?” I clapped him on the back. Victor looked at me sideways, horrified at the familiarity.

  “No, no money.” Fritz squinted at his offspring. “Manuel?”

  “Abuelo?” The leader of the grandsons stood. He cracked his gum. It formed a bulge in his right cheek.

  “Show them where the jeep is. Make sure the water and gas containers are full.”

  Manuel held his shotgun loosely in his hand. “Abuelo. Please.” His voice held in check the frustration of the parents of a two-year-old.

  “Not in front of the guests,” Fritz said.

  “Is that what they are?” Manuel looked at us, our dirty clothes, our unwashed faces, Victor’s swollen eyes. My broken nose. “We give away the jeep, what are we going to use?”

  “To what, hump your girlfriends in the back?” Fritz said. “Get a fucking room, kid.”

  “For these religious crazies?” Manuel stood over Victor, towering above the much shorter man. “This is the second jeep in two days.”

  “Who took the first jeep?” I asked.

  “Kate and the monks who escaped,” Victor said.

  “Kate was here?” I asked. I looked around me. “In this very room?”

  Manuel looked about to explode. “Who is this man, anyway?”

  “I told you,” Fritz said, and there was a pause while he coughed again. “Met him at the ashram.”

  “The ashram.” Manuel nodded. He went to his grandfather, put a hand on his shoulder. “Abuelo, you are a Catholic. We are all Catholics here. Not Buddhists.”

  Fritz straightened, or tried to. He glared at Manuel. “You are young. Prepare for life. Let me prepare for death.”

  “And what is all this talk of wars?” Manuel insisted. “The CIA,” he sneered. He gestured at us. “Crazy people. Crazy talk.”

  “Enough!” Fritz lifted the cane and struck his grandson on the upper arm. “I am not asking you. I am telling you. Give them the jeep.”

  Manuel sighed. He bowed his head. “Alright, abuelo. It will be as you say.” He tucked the shotgun under his poncho, went out into the chill afternoon.

  Fritz said to us, “I apologize for my grandson’s rudeness. You will need supplies as well, no?”

  I drained my third glass of Ribena. I blinked, alarmed at the heights of my sugar rush. I was going to crash, and soon. My addictions were forgotten. My body craved nutrition. “Could use some real food,” I said. “Haven’t eaten since dinner, day before yesterday.”

  “Well why didn’t you say so?” Fritz said. “Helena!”

  The cute half-breed niece poked a nose around the door, one eye visible. “Sí, tío?”

  “Dinner for our friends. Empty the larder.”

  I checked my watch. “Can you chuck it in a basket for us? We can eat in the jeep.”

  Victor pinched his lower lip. “Why don’t we eat here, with friends? An hour rest will do us good. We can still get there in plenty of time.”

  “You’re assuming the CIA haven’t changed their schedule,” I said.

  “In which case they’ve already blown it up,” Victor said. “Besides, we don’t want to get there too early. Otherwise they might catch us before we can record the event.”

  The door banged shut behind the niece, the hem of her skirt swirling against the door frame.

  Fritz held a finger high. “Let no one say I don’t know how to welcome guests.”

  Fritz’s hospitality was duly confirmed. The table was piled high. We ate like the hungry revolutionaries we were. Soup, roast beef, fried plantain, rice, German bread, a heroic attempt at a green salad, homemade pickled cucumbers, ice cream and a three-layer Bavarian raspberry-chocolate torte that just happened to be in the refrigerator.

  It was late in the afternoon when we finished. The sun crept in sideways through the windows. Manuel returned with the jeep. He laid the keys next to my empty plate. I checked my watch. It was later than I thought. I pushed myself from the table, finally sated. Picked up the keys, twirled them on my finger.

  “Shall we?”

  “Nonsense,” Fritz said, still meditating over the same lettuce leaf he’d shredded on his plate when he first sat down. “Dusk is come. We have beds here you may use.”

  “Yes,” Manuel said, stooping in a mock bow. “Do stay the night.”

  “Hello,” I said. “How much time we got left? Less than twenty-four hours. So let’s hit the road. Ready, toots?” I wiggled my eyebrows at Aurora, and for the first time I heard her laugh, a satisfied, contented giggle that ended abruptly.

  “It’s a fourteen-hour journey,” Victor said. “And there are dangers traveling the salt flats at night. We could nap for an hour or two. Better to be well-rested, don’t you think?”

  “Be my guest,” I said. “Or rather, be Fritz’s guest.” I stood. “Remind me, when does the bomb go off?”

  Victor looked at his watch. “11:37 tomorrow morning.”

  At that moment, all the clocks in the room struck six. I held out my hands, let them drop. “That’s cutting things way too close. I say we go now.”

  “Let me take a shower first, if I may,” Victor said, and looked at Fritz, who lowered his regal head with the finality of judgment.

  “Sho’ ’nuff,” I said. “But save your wanking till later, get me?”

  Despite their open hostility, the grandsons grinned at each other. Helena blushed and looked down at her half-eaten cake.

  “Can I, too?” Aurora asked.

  “What, wank?”

  “No, shower. Nong.”

  “For crying out loud.”

  “I’ll be quick,” Victor said, and went off in search of a clean towel.

  “We’re on a deadline to stop a war and you want to take a shower?” I said. “This is important.”

  Aurora sniffed my neck loudly. “So is being clean.” She turned to go.

  “Yeah, well.” I slapped her on the ass. She delayed her public outrage long enough to show me she didn’t mind.

  “I stink,” I said. “No amount of soap can change that fact.”

  We were loading the jee
p when Manuel caught me by the elbow, drew me aside. “You know what you’re getting yourself into?”

  “Not a fucking clue,” I said.

  He jabbed a gun into my ribs. The thin equatorial twilight cut his face into dark shards. His whisper was hot on my cheek.

  “Grandfather has Alzheimer’s,” he said.

  I shook my arm free. “Is that all?”

  He grabbed my ear and lifted. “No,” he said. “You bring me back this jeep. Not a scratch. Or I come looking for you. Hear?”

  He pressed the gun into my hands. The barrel was enormous. It was a flare gun. He pulled harder on my ear, and I lifted myself on tiptoe.

  “I said, ‘hear?’”

  “I hear you,” I said. “Message clear. Understood. Absolutely crystal. Fuck! Goddammit. Thank you.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  The jeep crunched across the salt flats. We drove without headlights. The full moon reflected off the crystallized former lake bed. Isla de los Pescadores rose on the horizon, a deformity on the otherwise flat surface.

  It had been a long night of driving. We’d left La Paz after dinner and made it to Oruro before midnight. Around four in the morning we sped through the outpost of Uyuni, heading our way southwest into the heart of the Salar. We were ahead of schedule. At this rate, we could expect to reach the mine just after dawn. Plenty of time to poke around, see what there was to see. Record the bombing when it happened.

  We stopped every few hours to take a leak, our urine rising hot on the night-frozen salt. It was cold in the jeep, and I had no gloves. Victor and I took turns driving, and each time we stopped to swap seats, I had to pry my fingers from the steering wheel.

  Staring at the night sky, at the dome of the heavens ancient and haunting, I was reminded of my smallness, the pointlessness of all existence. And as the urine dribbled from my body, my dick in my cold fingers, I thought of Pitt. Those empty eye sockets, the skin crumpling and flaking under my fingers, his flesh cooked to a soggy medium rare.

  Pitt is dead. It sinks in now. He’s gone. He isn’t coming back. Aurora understood that, I realized. Nothing I can do, no revenge, will bring him back to life.

  “No woman will ever understand you the way another man will,” Pitt said.

  We were sitting on the beach, watching the sun set, beers in hand, a chaste distance between us. In Huanchaco, the night before the blackmail. Before the rope. Before everything between us changed.

  “To friendship,” I said, holding out my can of Cusqueña.

  We clinked our beers and drained them. Sighed at the same time, and exchanged glances of shared happiness. Together we leaned back in the sand. Across the waters of the Pacific Ocean, a ball of fire ninety-three million miles away said goodnight. Or was it goodbye?

  And he was right. I’ve had many lovers, but only one friend. He didn’t understand me. Not really. But he didn’t judge me, either. In his eyes I had done nothing wrong. Whenever I was with him, I could lay down my burden. I felt the loss more sharply than any failed infatuation.

  But he betrayed you.

  Was it betrayal later that night, when I sobbed on his shoulder, called out for my missing girl, my dead child, mourning to the heavens, cursing all existence and the fates who gave me life?

  “It’s not your fault,” he said. His hand on my ear guided my tearless eyes to his shoulder.

  “You must think I’m a wuss to go on like this.” I tried to free myself, but he held me tight.

  “We have all sinned.” He talked over my head at the waves. “We are all human. We are all guilty.” He stroked my hair. “Sometimes I wonder how I’ll ever cope.”

  I pulled away. “Since when do you have guilt?”

  He didn’t look at me. “Since always. It’s just taken a while for me to know that’s what it was.”

  “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” I asked.

  He drank his beer. “I once poisoned a river. Killed thirty thousand people.” He held out his open palms and laughed. Or tried to. “In the jungle, no one cares.”

  I sat up. He let me. I slapped at the tear stains on his shirt. They weren’t mine. I said, “Sorry, man.”

  He blew his nose on his shirt. “It’ll wash out.”

  “So,” I said, “what happened to mister sociopath, I don’t have a conscience, I make ’smores out of dissidents’ testicles? Since when did you go all gooey?”

  “Gooey,” he said. “Is that what I am?” He looked at the full moon. He reached for another beer. Cracked it open, poured the entire can down his throat. Dropped his head to his chest.

  When he looked up, he held a clove of garlic between thumb and forefinger. He rubbed it in one eye and grinned. “Just fucking with you, man.”

  I turned away. “Christ, you’re an asshole.”

  He laughed. “Dude… Don’t take it so seriously.”

  In spite of myself, I found myself grinning too. “That’s the Pitt I know and love.”

  “What was that?” Aurora gasped from the backseat. She huddled in a blanket against the severe cold.

  “What was what?” I said.

  “That sound. Listen.”

  A clunking noise from the engine. A grinding sound. The engine sputtered and went silent. Victor coasted to a halt. He reached over and removed a flashlight from the glove box. Gave it to me. He said, “Come on.”

  We stepped out onto the salt. Victor hefted a metal toolbox from under the seat. Lifted the hood and propped it open, immersed himself in the innards of the jeep.

  I looked down at the engine. I was lost. I’m one of those overeducated morons American universities churn out every year, men without any discernible ability or skill, except perhaps for drinking beer, doing drugs and licking pussy.

  “Well?” I said at last.

  Victor pointed. I looked. I shook my head. “So?”

  “So?” he said. “Somebody sabotaged the engine. And I have a pretty good idea who it was, too.”

  “Manuel.”

  “Who do you think?” He threw a heavy wrench on the ground.

  The moon hung high in the sky, taunting us with its glimmer of reflected warmth. I pulled my woolen hat down over my ears, crossed my arms and hugged myself.

  “Now what do we do?” I asked.

  “We wait.”

  I peered at my watch. It was many hours before dawn. The danger of freezing to death was real. Insulated by the jeep, and warmed by the heater, we had passed the night without too much discomfort. Until now.

  I got into the backseat and closed the door. “Share that blanket with me?” I asked Aurora.

  “Sure.”

  She snuggled close. She laid her head on my chest. I pulled the blanket up to cover us both. She shivered.

  “We could both die here,” I said.

  “I’ll be seeing Sven soon, then.”

  I stroked her hair, pulling it away from her face. I lifted the flap of her woolen Andean hat to expose an earlobe.

  “And if we live?”

  She nuzzled closer. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  She got back into the jeep after taking a piss. I could hear her urine splashing against the hard-packed salt. The rustle of her pants. The zipper of her jacket. She closed the door, cuddled next to me under the blanket. Somehow she looked different. Then I realized what it was.

  “Is that lipstick?” I asked.

  “What? No.”

  I rubbed my thumb against her lower lip, and she flinched. I held my hand up to the window. The moonlight showed a darkened smudge.

  “OK, so it is,” she said. “What about it?”

  “I just think it’s strange, that’s all,” I said. “Why would you wear lipstick out here in the altiplano?”

  I knew exactly why. She wanted to play, we could play. But by my rules, not hers.

  She shrugged. “No reason.”

  “Where did you get it?” I asked her. “You travel with lipstick in your pocket?”

  “No. Of course
not.”

  “Then who gave it to you?”

  “What is this, an interrogation?”

  “I’m just asking,” I said.

  “Fine,” she said. “Helena did. The Swiss-German girl. She gave me one of hers.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t understand,” I said. “Why would you want to wear lipstick in a place like this?”

  She frowned. “Well, why not?”

  “Lip balm, maybe,” I said. “Against exposure. But lipstick?” I looked at my thumb again. “Much less red lipstick?”

  “Goddammit!” she said, and sat up straight. “Because I wanted you to kiss me, alright?”

  “Try to keep it down back there, will you?” Victor said from the front seat, where he’d curled up in his jacket to try to keep warm. Fritz had given him a new sweater, some hefty mittens and a down parka.

  “You wanted me to what?” I asked, feigning astonishment.

  She sat back against her seat. “Well I did, anyway.”

  “No, no, no,” I said. “That’s…fine. It’s just, that’s…the last thing I was expecting, is all.”

  “Forget about it,” she said. She tucked her chin to her chest. “Never mind.”

  I took her chin in my hand. She looked up at me. Sorrowful green eyes of another human being. Someone other than me. Other people exist, I thought. Not just me. What an amazing thing.

  “I didn’t say no,” I said, and kissed her cold lips.

  She didn’t respond. I pulled away. She kissed me back. Wrapped her arms around my neck and licked my teeth. All of a sudden, she jerked back, as though stung.

  “Was that alright?” I asked.

  She hugged her arms to her chest. “We shouldn’t be doing this.”

  “OK…” Talk about hot and cold. “Well,” I said, “we don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

  She pursed her lips. “Sven’s been dead for less than two days. And here I am snogging you.”

  “But Sven’s not coming back,” I said. “Not any more than my Liliana is ever coming back. When is enough, enough?”

  She said, “But you still mourn.”

  I slumped back in my seat. “Touché.”